Jerusalem, Jerusalem

by Lynnea Miller

Text: Luke 13:31-35

At the heart of this passage is Jesus’s deep and honest lament for a place that is incredibly meaningful and important to him: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem.” I imagine his tone like that of a parent talking to a beloved child after they’ve done something out of character. Jesus is speaking to and about Jerusalem in a way that any of us might talk about something we deeply love when it is not currently operating at its best, when it’s not living up to all it is capable of, or the way we’ve seen it in the past — the way that we know it can.

Jesus is talking to and about Jerusalem with conflicted feelings, with a personal stake in the matter. He is a Jewish man who has spent time in this city for his holiest of days, many times. He has deep love and hope for this place. But he is also feeling real loss, grief, and pain. The next time he’ll be back in Jerusalem will be for the “triumphal entry” on Palm Sunday. He alludes to it here in this passage. We know that story, too; it is not triumphant for long.

As I have spent time with this passage imagining Jesus’s tone of voice, feelings, and thoughts about his beloved Jerusalem, I am prompted to think about times that I’ve felt like Jesus may have here.

Have you ever felt that you have outgrown or no longer fit into a beloved place or community? A place you love, that once did, or even still does, feel like home? A place where you know what it’s like when it’s at its best? But now you’re seeing before your eyes operating at perhaps its worst? You once fit in and were included, and your voice and presence were valued, but now all of a sudden, almost out of the blue, you feel on the outside. It might be a particular community — family, friend groups, churches, denominations, homes, important destinations or locations in your life, vocations, a neighborhood, or a nation.

I don’t mean to ask if you or I have “outgrown” a community in a way that disrespects that place or people, or to speak with malice about those people, and certainly not to do that about Jerusalem, whether at the time of Jesus or afterwards. “Outgrown” here can simply mean that you’ve been growing, hoping, and dreaming for that community, sensing that you’re following God in a particular direction, that you have memories and ideas about what this community is. And then you realize that the way you’re growing is not the same direction that community is growing, your hopes and dreams for the place are not its hopes and dreams for itself, your sense of where God is leading this community is not where they think God is leading them.

As we look closer at Jesus’s story of relating to his own community, may we acknowledge the ways in which we may identify, even in a small way, with how he feels and what places this might be for us today.

At the beginning of this passage a group of religious leaders are telling Jesus that he needs to leave Jerusalem, that King Herod is after him. Jesus responds to them saying to go and tell “that fox” that all he is doing is his ministry; healing people, casting out demons, and so on.

No cunning threats from Herod can deter Jesus from his work. Yet Jesus acknowledges that he will leave because he knows Jerusalem to be a place where prophets get killed.

Jesus explains, “I must be on my way, because it’s impossible for a prophet to get killed outside Jerusalem.” He goes on to say, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills prophets and stones those who are sent to it.”

Jesus is aligning himself here with the prophets. Over their history, Israel and Judah have had many, many prophets sent by God to remind the community that they are God’s covenant people and that therefore they have certain responsibilities and ways they are to live and move and have their being. Prophets come on the scene precisely when the community is veering in the opposite direction of where God’s calling it.

Typically prophets are from the very community or people to whom they have been sent. They are called to be prophets to their own people and often, but not always, to the places that they know, and love, and believe in.

Also unfortunately, some of the prophets were killed for daring to call their community and beloved places to account, for daring to tell them, “We are not being who we are, we are not being who we are supposed to be!”

Tragically, that message cost some prophets their lives. This is something that Jesus knows, and this is precisely what Jesus is lamenting. He knows Jerusalem and the people of God at their best, but he is also aware of this particular past. In his own case, he knows that this past is going to repeat itself.

He will die as these other prophets did simply because he cares for the community, he cares for the place. He wants to see them at their best, following him as Messiah and living into the way of God’s kingdom. He uses the tender language that he simply wants to gather the children of Jerusalem, his people, under his wing as if he were a mother hen, guiding and loving and directing her children in the way that’s best for them. But the community is unwilling.

This is often the prophetic task: loving a place so much that you want to see it again as what it could be, and then telling the community the truth about itself, knowing that there is a cost to living prophetically. What is our calling?

In the season of Lent, we are invited to forty days of intentionally following Jesus, who was led by the Spirit into the wilderness and who prepared for his prophetic ministry there. Lent is a time where we recognize that if we want to follow Jesus, it will, if we’re doing it right, lead us down a road sometimes of difficulty, trial, sacrifice, and suffering.

To unapologetically proclaim and live out the values of the kingdom of God in a world that most of the time operates in a way that is diametrically opposed to it, surely has some risk associated with it. Often, the risk is that the powers that be, the ones who want to defend the ways of the kingdoms of the world, earthly power, greed, and oppression, are not going to let the threatening behavior of prophets go unchecked. This is exactly what got Jesus into trouble.

Discipleship is not about seeking pain, suffering, or sacrifice for their own sake. Lent is a time to remind ourselves that these are also not things that are to be avoided at all costs. They cannot be avoided at all. This is firstly because we are all human; “from dust we have come and to dust we will return.” Secondly, if we are to sincerely follow Christ and the way of God’s kingdom, this is often a path that will involve some sacrifice.

Part of our calling is to live prophetically, as Jesus did. To tell the truth to our communities may be when we realize we no longer fit into or are going the same direction as these people we love.

Staying connected to these communities doesn’t necessarily mean we need to continually put ourselves in harm’s way by always being in the places we are speaking to. After all, Jesus himself does not remain in Jerusalem here when the Pharisees are warning him that he is in danger. Instead he leaves, travels to other places, ministering to Jewish people, as well as Samaritans, Canaanites, and Romans. We can speak prophetically to our communities, without primarily locating ourselves in those places all the time.

This work will still take a toll, even if we are removed. Our communities may not respond in the way we expect. Our hope, praise God, is not rooted in whether or not these places and communities respond and have their eyes opened. Yet, we know that it is precisely because we care deeply about the flourishing of a place or community that we are engaged in this work. Our calling to follow in Christ’s footsteps is simply to be faithful voices for the way of God’s kingdom.

So here in the interim, in the in-between time, while we strive to live out our calling as followers of Jesus, we can be encouraged by the words of the Apostle Paul, as he writes to the church in Philippi: “Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved” (Phil 4:1). We can know that our citizenship and hope is not here — not in the places we find ourselves now, or the places we are called to prophetically speak to — but in heaven, in God’s kingdom. The fact that God is raising up prophets in our midst is evidence that God is active and that God is here. Let us remain confident, that even now in our days, we will be able to see and know and experience God’s presence with and among us.